Meeting planners (MPs) facilitate and organize corporate meetings, events, and other types of gatherings for businesses, charitable organizations and private parties. There is a continuing need by these meeting planners to locate prospective venues, confirm the amenities, room availability, meeting room availability and other characteristics of the hospitality facility prior to negotiating a price for the meeting or event. From the perspective of the hospitality facility vendor (that is, the hotel, conference center or other type of hospitality facility), there is a need to easily provide basic information regarding the facility and a further need to operate the facility at a high occupancy or utilization rate. Of course, the hospitality facility vendor is seeking the highest possible price for utilization of the facility and the highest occupancy rate, and meeting planners are seeking the lowest possible price for room and board and reasonable quality facilities.
Taking into account the competing and common interests of these parties, there is a need for an information and matching service, implemented as a computer program or a computerized method, which facilitates the postings of offers to sell or provide hospitality facilities and subsequently permit meeting planners to bid on those hotel offerings and a system and method for vendors to bid on meetings and events corresponding to event offers posted by meeting planners. A discussion of some prior art systems follow.
Winsor consultants (“Meeting Auctions” www.meetingauctions.com/) discloses a method for providing and bidding on meeting rooms. Four options are listed. In option one, the user searches the hotel database and completes an Auction/RFP form (request for proposal) stating his requirements regarding hotel rooms. When the submit button is clicked, the form is sent to the Auctioneer who contacts the hotel and sends the user the results. In option two, the user provides more data in the Auction RFP form, such as region, a range of dates, etc. The Auctioneer contacts the hotels with the same effect. In option three, if the user request in the Auction RIP/form, the Auctioneer will contact a large group of hotels to solicit proposals. After discussing a short list with the user, the Auctioneer will work out a satisfactory rate and contract with the selected hotel(s). In option 4, the user fills out the Auction RFP form with the minimum information, and the Auctioneer contacts the user to discuss options.
An article from Business Wire (Oct. 27, 1999) discloses details regarding StarCite.com which provides an auctioning system for meetings and planning particularly with reference to bidding for hotel rooms, and other aspects concerning meetings. The emphasis is on planning, and the essential idea is to develop a large database that contains as much information as possible about hotels including all aspects of meeting, such as old RFPs so that planners can plan and track meetings, amount spent, and have reference to suppliers and specific meeting and travel policies. Planners can search more than 50,000 suppliers. Another site is enventsource.com.
Priceline.com is engaged in a bidding and auction system. The procedure is straight forward and involves booking a hotel room at a favorable rate dictated by the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,207 to Walker et al discloses a system for allowing prospective buyers of goods and services to communicate a binding purchase offer globally to potential sellers and for sellers to conveniently search for relevant buyer purchase offers. No auction is conducted in the normal sense, and the system is simply an outreach technique that a buyer with limited resources and usage can use to contact many sellers, and thereby, try to purchase at more favorable and competitive terms vis-a-vis large buyers.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,012,045 to Barzilai et al discloses a computer based method of selling consumer products and services. The computer electronically establishes a virtual showroom in which is displayed the consumer products and services, and a plurality of customers are interconnected to the computer via a telecommunication link. The auction is run in the usual way, with consumers bidding for the goods and services. The computer determines the highest and successful bid.
Due to the increased cost of travel, corporations and organizations (a) need to justify the expense of large meetings as well as frequent traveler expenses (e.g., traveling sales representatives), (b) compare the estimated costs of competing hotels, meeting halls, etc.; and (c) reduce or shift the risk of overbooking, cancellation due to weather, labor strikes, etc.